by How to Tell A Story- The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tale (mobi)
SF and Fantasy is a genre of contradictions: While anything is possible in an SF or Fantasy novel, and the phrase "cutting edge" is applied to almost every new writer of SF, there is, nevertheless, a powerful force of conservatism among SF and Fantasy editors. Many of the people involved in publishing SF and Fantasy cling to the notion that aping the success of others is more important (because of potential financial rewards) than encouraging the development of what HarperPrism Executive Editor and Vice President John Silbersack describes as the "literature of revolution." He explains, "The core purpose ... of any work of fabulism ... is the questioning of established things. SF takes this principle to extremes" (Editors on Editing, Grove Press). More than perhaps any other genre, there is a purity about SF fiction because SF and Fantasy are, in essence, fiction of ideas and experimentation.
One well-known SF series started with a book called Dune, by Frank Herbert, which was followed by Dune Messiah. Then there's Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune and others. You'll notice that the covers of these books are quite different from the covers of romance novels. It's easy to see that Dune is a book about a desert planet and alien races and that it takes place in the future. You wouldn't confuse Dune with Share the Dream.
There are many kinds of Science Fiction, from the hard science type of story, to "space operas," such as Star Wars and Star Trek, to cyberpunk written by authors such as William Gibson and K.W. Jeter, to what can be called "head" science fiction or speculative fiction, where the science may be almost nonexistent.
Among the most famous Fantasy novels are The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkein; the Thomas Covenant series, by Stephen Donaldson; and the witty Belgariad series, by David Eddings. Then there are the science fiction/fantasy novels of C.J. Cherryh and Anne McCaffrey among many others.
Westerns
Here's a famous book: Shane, by Jack Schaefer. Another is Journey to Shiloh, by Will Henry, and a third, The Virginian, by Owen Wister. By the covers, often showing cowboys with sidearms, Native Americans in full warpath regalia, wagon trains, and rearing horses against backgrounds reminiscent of the American Southwest, they, and the other books they are collected with, are clearly definable as westerns—that peculiar brand of story that is partly gritty, partly historical, partly mythological in its storymaking about the western frontier of America from roughly 1840 to 1900.
The West is a state of mind to most who live there and those who write about it (and several successful western authors have never been farther west than Newark, New Jersey!). The western is about the opening of the frontier, the perils and tribulations of creating something from nothing and those who gambled, often with their lives and their fortunes, in order to establish themselves and their dreams. There is a natural conflict at the heart of every western, be it man against man, man against nature, or man against himself. These conflicts are concerned with morality and the challenges of survival. The stories are filled with concepts such as sacrifice, self-denial, and unwavering commitment to a goal or an ideal, concepts that have a direction and clarity contemporary stories sometimes lack, for whatever reason.
Furthermore, they are, on one level (or should be), historical novels about people who existed in a specific time and place, and the novels should reflect just enough accurate historical detail to convince a reader he is in mid-nineteenth-century America.
Westerns are not an easy genre to break into, though, because there are only a handful of editors working in the field, and their lists are already pretty full.
The Literary Novel
Literary (or mainstream) is a genre like any other. Some practitioners of this genre, though, believe that story is not important, and that writing and atmosphere are all. Literary novels are hard to sell because the competition and standards are extremely tough and the available publishing "slots" relatively few. The reason is that the publisher can't find an identifiable audience. There's no group that says, "Hey, do you have any mainstream novels?"
The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce; For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway; The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco; Jazz, by Toni Morrison; The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan; and Slaves of New York, by Tama Janowitz, are all good examples of literary novels. Some people confuse literate with literary, but they're not the same things. All books, whether fiction or nonfiction, should be literate, that is, gracefully well written.
The literary genre is a "tough nut to crack" for first-time writers. The literary novel must survive on the reputation and consummate skill of the writer, on book reviews and blurbs from other more famous writers, and on word of mouth. If you're a beginner, you don't have much of that going for you. There are plenty of examples to prove us wrong over the years, but then the authors are probably not reading this book, and almost certainly are not making a living writing fiction exclusively.
If you're writing a literary novel, consider whether it can be made into a novel of a more commercial genre. Maybe there's a romance in it. If so, build up the romance. Maybe there's a mystery—build it. After all, what made the great writers of the past "great" was not just their ability to paint images on the page with words and create memorable characters, it was their skill at spinning a good story. A lot more people have read Dickens or Twain or Tolstoy or even Joyce than Marcel Proust or Virginia Woolf because the former have a story to tell with wonderful, emotionally involving characters. James Joyce actually said that all stories should begin, "Once upon a time . . . "
Nonfiction
Here's a nonfiction book: How the Tiger Lost Its Stripes, by Cory Meacham. It has a picture of a tiger on the front cover, and it's about the demise of the wild tiger. You can tell right away it's not going to be confused with Mario Puzo's The Godfather (which, while a mainstream novel, is really also a type of crime novel).
The cover blurbs or quotes and the title of the tiger book suggest that it might appeal to those who are interested in travel, the clash of cultures between East and West, the environment, and even books about cats. This is a popular science title, and it falls into a category that has its own rules and structure that must be observed and followed if you want to be published in it.
Narrative nonfiction, that is, character-driven nonfiction has a definite structure that needs to be considered. A good commercial nonfiction piece should have a narrative thrust, and it should encompass a debate on a topic of national interest that grows from the story. A good example of this would be The Burning Bed and the issue of domestic abuse. It should also find a positive spin on even the most negative topic. Readers don't want to plunk down twenty-five dollars for a book only to be told that life is hopeless. While that approach can work effectively in a magazine or newspaper because it is balanced by other more upbeat pieces in the same issue, a book rises or falls on its own merits.
A book of nonfiction must have lots of information and can't just be a soapbox for you to spout your pet grievance. If, for example, you're going to write about your struggles to get good medical care for your wife who is suffering from cancer, there's no point ranting and raving about the HMO that has made your (and your wife's) life miserable. You need to carefully recount, in as honest a way as possible, a strongly written narrative infused with lots of emotional content about what it was like to be unable to reach the HMO and complain about its inadequate care of your wife while she writhed in pain before you. People have to trust you as a guide to the topic you're writing about before they'll bother to read what you have to say. That's why most successful nonfiction is written by experts of one sort or another.
True Crime
True crime is another nonfiction section in the bookstore. The experts who write true crime successfully are, or have been, lawyers, cops, investigators, journalists, forensic specialists and so forth. Let's take a look at the book Witch Hunt, by Kathryn Lyon. Looking on the back cover, I can see it is about a series of miscarriages of justice from overzealous police and prosecutors. William
Styron, a famous writer I've heard of, is quoted on the cover as saying this is a terrific book. Several other writers whose work or reputation I know are similarly quoted. Perhaps I might buy this book. Cover blurbs or quotes on books, particularly books by new writers, can be very helpful in attracting readers to the book.
A few more well-known true crime narratives include Charmer, by Jack Olsen; Small Sacrifices, by Ann Rule; and the famous In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. Is it nonfiction or fiction? It's a true story after all, though it was the first one to use fictional techniques to tell a true story.
True crime or current events books allow us to peer into the mind of the demented. They are influenced by whether a gripping story can be woven, who the characters are, where the story took place and so on. One of the elements of narrative nonfiction that many writers do not consider carefully enough is that it takes the techniques and skills of a journalist and a novelist to write a compelling story. How the story is told is as important as what happened.
In Editors on Editing, St. Martin's Press Senior Editor Charles Spicer explains there are two basic types of true crime book: the gut story, that is, one that affects us on a primal level, such as Ann Rule's Small Sacrifices about a mother murdering her children; and the glamour story, set in the world of the rich and famous, such as William Wright's The Von
Bulow Affair about the murder trial of Claus Von Bulow, accused of killing his socialite wife, Sunny.
Beyond powerful—and, of course, accurate—characterization with identifiable villains, and if possible also heroes, the narrative nonfiction book should have some sort of unraveling investigation. It is the writer's job to learn the art of the newspaper reporter, capturing not only the spirit of what was said and done, but doing it accurately without boring readers with unnecessary detail or speech.
Fashion in Genres
True crime is an example of a category that, while once very popular, is now harder to sell. Fashion in genres goes in phases. A genre can be "hot," and then it is overbought and becomes hard to sell into for a while. The genre becomes "dormant" until a book comes along that reinvigorates the category beyond the work of the established few authors who have luckily continued to write and sell in that area, keeping it "ticking over." True crime books can sometimes be reshaped as current events if the story (such as The Burning Bed) is broad enough and symbolic enough to become more than just the sum of what happened.
Biography
Biographies fall into many categories. For example, psychological biographies, such as Katherine Ramsland's biography of Anne Rice, Prism of the Night, use the work and life of the biographical subject as an indicator of the subject's inner world. Literary biographies such as A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius and Gerald Clarke's Capote, are always about literary figures.
There are broadly three types of biography. All try to reveal the essence of the subject: interpretive, where the facts of the story are interpreted by the biographer's imagination, in an effort to reveal the intimate qualities of the subject; objective, which gathers facts and documents how the subject lived;
and dramatic, which uses fictional techniques to re-create the subject and her times.
In general, a biography has to have a theme, and its subject has to fit into the context of the times the subject lived in. More than that, the subject of a biography should also be a symbol of some sort for the spirit of his age. The book should bring out some thematic element of that culture. Broadly, a good biography is one that illuminates and shows the times more than just the person.
The same kind of investigative, analytical attention to detail used in true crime is foremost in biography. The literary critic Roland Barthes once said that biography is fiction that dare not speak its name. The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin added, "The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image" (Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, p. 308:5).
The subject's life should have had a profound effect on the people who came into contact with her, and some shadow of it should also touch the reader of the biography.
The dangers of biography are inaccuracy and hero worship. The biographer needs to cultivate an objective eye that fits his subject into the world with compassion. Most biographies treat their subjects as one of three things: an example, a victim, or a source of wisdom.
It's not necessary, however, to tell a life in a chronological fashion. As with fiction, what is important is a series of illuminating scenes. In particular, readers need to see the formative scenes, in childhood or as an adult, that somehow throw a light on the subject's behavior and life. The death of Claudia, Anne Rice's child, was the catalyst through which readers can grasp Rice's life and events when they examine the world of her first few novels (Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, etc.).
Biography depends on two things: public and personal papers and sources, and living witnesses. Of course, in the case of the long-dead, you're stuck with only one of the two. The biographer also needs to have the deepest regard for her subject, because undoubtedly the writer will discover that her subject has clay feet and is often disappointing on a personal level, especially when compared with the myth that may well have grown up around the subject. George Orwell's biographer learned, for example, that in person Orwell was a surly and unpleasant man.
It is perhaps one of the most demanding forms of writing: The author must know her subject intimately and must make certain that permissions are obtained from those relevant people who are living and that quotes are accurately related and sourced.
One of the best examples of a modern biography is Anne Sexton: A Biography, by Diane Middlebrook. Anne Sexton was a noted poet who had a history of psychiatric problems and who finally took her own life. The book received momentary notoriety when the first review in the trade magazine Publishers Weekly questioned the morality of using the tapes of Anne's sessions with her psychiatrist Dr. Martin Orne. Orne had agreed to cooperate with the author with the agreement of the Sexton estate, and he provided the private tapes for Middlebrook's use.
As Middlebrook wrote the biography (over ten years), she was able to relate Sexton's poetry to her psychiatric experiences, throwing new light on both Sexton and her work and helping us to appreciate both with greater understanding. Despite the controversy, the book received broad critical acclaim and became a best-seller.
The biographer must have the skills of a storyteller to construct an insightful, compelling narrative; a diplomat to deal with the many witnesses who can shed light on the subject's life; and a detective, in order to dig out facts and research on the subject. She must be devoted to her subject and yet objective enough to explore the dark nooks and crannies of the life in question. And she must have the literary brillance and psychological insight to create a book that the subject could honestly admit was an accurate portrayal of who he is and what he is. Unless you are a skilled writer with a strong analytical background, biography is going to be a tough genre to use to break into publication.
Memoirs
This is a particularly demanding form of autobiography, and deceptively difficult to write well. A big fuss was made of Kathryn Harrison's book about incest, The Kiss, and also Frank McCourt's memoir of a childhood cursed with drink, violence and poverty in Angela's Ashes.
In the wake of all this attention, a woman in my business partner Lori's building stopped her in the elevator one day and said, "I've written a memoir about growing up in this neighborhood. Would you like to read it?"
Now we get several manuscripts a week along these lines, nearly all of which we reject, so Lori asked her, "Was there any trauma in your family? Did you suffer rape or incest or serious disease?"
The woman was horrified and turned in a huff believing that Lori had slighted and ridiculed her. In fact, memoirs are about traumatic events in a writer's life that a writer of exquisite skill can transform into an experience we can all share. It is the nearest thing to poetry a writer of pro
se can create. Read Isabel Allende's moving book Paula about the sickness and coma her daughter suffered.
Memoirs are about a child's sickness, a father's death, a loss of honor or career. We read another's pain because the writer's sensibility allows him to extract from his dreadful experience powerful universal emotions that illuminate our lives. Editors who buy memoirs do so because the writers have successfully transferred their experiences to the page in a strong emotional way, and in so doing, like the alchemists of old, have transmuted the experiences from base lead into gold.
NEARLY ALL BOOKS FIT A CATEGORY
Over by another stack of books, I've spotted one called The Pork Chop War, by Gary, aimed at children in the ten to thirteen age range. And here's another series of books aimed at young readers, Goosebumps, by R.L. Stine. Over there are some famous children's books: Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis; and the Oz stories of L. Frank Baum.
Probably 98 percent of books written fall into some category. The reason for this is that readers gravitate toward a certain kind of reading encounter. You've probably had a similar experience. Perhaps there were periods when you read lots of westerns, then you started reading science fiction. Or you read a load of romances, and then Jackie Collins and some mysteries, and then you moved on to Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley. Before you knew it, you were reading The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan, and then novels by Alice Hoffman and Toni Morrison. But every time you went to the library or the bookstore, you had some idea of what you wanted to buy before you got there.
There are millions of people who love to read murder mysteries, for instance, and while they're looking for crime novels, they have no interest at all in reading romances or westerns. Perhaps the most recent books they read were murder mysteries and they enjoyed them so much that, while they don't want the same story, they do want stories with murders and crimes in them.
Similarly, if the last book you enjoyed was a romance, you'll likely go back to the store looking for that author's next book, or one like it. And so it's important for an author to understand what a reader's expectations are.
